In the lead up to the 7th Canadian Film Festival in Australia (August 2012), join us as we countdown the Top 100 Canadian Films of the past 30 years. We'll be posting one film a day leading up to Canada Day on July 1st 2012. Do you agree with our team favourites? Let us know your thoughts!
After 10 years “in the city” William (Chris Leavins) returns to his home town in Nova Scotia for the wedding of his sister Rosemary (Kerry Fox). A young gay man who has fled his self-loathing past and stifling family is thus forced to confront his demons in Thom Fitzgerald’s striking debut feature.
The narrative is haunted by flashbacks in which William is a chubby, miserable teenager struggling with his sexuality. We learn that his first homosexual experience was with Fletcher, the very person Rosemary is planning to marry. This is a story of reconciliation across time, but also a colourful, at times surreal portrait of a dysfunctional family haunted by its own secrets.
The Hanging Garden, for all its magical realism, seems anchored in honesty and real experience. “William is an alter ego,” says Fitzgerald. “When I decided to be closer to my family and make some kind of reconnection, I thought what better way to do it than in my imagination: it'll all go swimmingly if I do it on paper rather than in real life. That was the motive for the screenplay.”
The film benefits from great performances by its strong ensemble cast, which includes Peter MacNeill and Sarah Polley, and a keen eye for character and dialogue. The production design is lush and vibrant, the photography textured and saturated with colour.
Guilt, sexual repression and melodrama were the key ingredients of queer cinema in the 90s, and Fitzgerald’s The Hanging Garden is a rich addition to a cinematic movement that helped a generation of queer men and women define itself.
- Matt Ravier
"The Hanging Garden, which veers wildly between harrowing kitchen-sink realism and surreal fantasy, adds enough bizarre touches (including the naming of its characters after various herbs and flowers) to this version of the prodigal son parable that it reinvents the formula.” – The New York Times
To see the other films in the countdown so far, click here.